Jaco Pastorius – Jaco Pastorius (1976)

“This kind of brought the finesse to fretless bass playing. Jaco did it in a way that really turned people’s attention to the bass in a different way from Stanley Clarke. Stanley brought the fire – he was playing fast with a lot of attack and brightness – but Jaco came in with a new sound. He was running lines like horn players. His solos sounded very orchestrated. He had a touch that was all his own.

“And what a writer! To me, that was his forte, even more so than his playing. There were other guys who could compose, but Jaco brought a sense of songcraft to the instrument in a way that nobody had done before. So you had that, and then you had his bass playing, which really complemented his overall approach.”